Boys are spending more than thirteen hours a week playing video games. As a result, they're spending less time outdoors playing and exercising. Perhaps this is partially why they are four times more likely to be obese than they were thirty years ago.

Research consistently confirms that the more time boys spend playing video games, the more likely they are to do poorly in school—regardless of age. At a time when boys are already underperforming in school, video games only make the situation worse.

Many recent studies suggest that playing video games saps the motivation of boys and disconnects them from the real world... Violent video games are especially harmful. A definite link has been established between violent video games and antisocial behavior. Games like Grand Theft Auto and Halo can make your son more aggressive.

So if you're thinking of buying video games for your son this holiday season, you might want to reconsider.

You just need to check his website to see what this is about. He charges a couple thousand for his "training" and lectures. If he can make parents paranoid about video games and convince them that theres something wrong with their kids, and that he has the answer, kaching! his cash register rings. So it doesnt matter to him what the facts are or what the science is, all that matters is getting people to buy his product. And ironically, guys like him need violent video games. If they didnt exist, he'd be out of business.

I think that anyone who says that only boys play Videogames is someone who does not know anything about Videogames and is still stuck in their outdated 80's Steriotype.

Also the same reason why I think that the opinion that Violent Videogames reward points for head shots in games like Grand Theft Auto is completely rubbish and full of opinions that have no real fact of PLAYING THE GAME to back them up.

Ridiculous on nearly every level. The only practical thing was said was the link between Games and Obesity. I don't think we can argue with that one (nor blame the games but rather the people who don't use moderation). But everything else, ridiculous and wrong.

We've seen studies that we all generally agreed with that said that video games can increase aggression levels in kids. However, those same studies also said that increased aggression doesn't necessarily mean more violent. Playing soccer increases aggression levels as well, but I don't see anyone pulling thier kids out of sports.

What I'm trying to say is, using the "aggression" card against video gaming is misleading, and they should stop invoking it.

The problem about whining about the failings of society you show you are unable to act and aid society, all they do is sit at the top and whine and complain on common place issues they know nothing about. ================================= Pirates,Shearers,Lenders and downloaders are not a market that can be taped by the mainstream. --------------------------------- I is fuzzy brained mew =^^=http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/

Copyright infringement is nothing more than civil disobedience to a bad set of laws. Let's renegotiate them.

It's like a laundry list of complaints, and hey if it doesn't mention interactivity you can replace video games with TV and you'd have an argument from the early 90s (or maybe later).

My parents have hidden the controllers to prevent me from playing them, and even if I found out where they were I'd still have to wait for both of them to be gone before playing, or they could just stow them in the trunk of the car. I'm sure that with the newer consoles that wouldn't be neccesary to limit play time.

It reminds me of something Jon Stewart said when he was making fun of a politician, whose sons were avid gamers, expressing concern for violence in games.

"And as I stand there, watching them play these violent games, .. helpless to do anything about it, I can't help but wonder ... where the system has failed."

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"What for you bury me in the cold cold ground?" - Tasmanian devil

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Debates are like merry go rounds.
Two people take their positions then they go through the same points over and over and over again. Then when it's over they have the same positions they started in.

"A definite link has been established between violent video games and antisocial behavior."

Really? Goodness, this whole article just lumps assumptions and unsubstantiated statements into one nice little wrapped package of BS. Seriously, this guy just pulled everything out of his....uh, rear.

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"We received 20 calls last night. As we all know, one call equals a billion people. So 20 billion people called us last night. We must act to preserve decency on television." -The FCC

"This is not the difficult thing, gentlemen, to escape death, but it is far more difficult to escape evil, for it runs faster than death." -Socrates

Funny, the people at my school how has the lowest games are the out going people that don't play video games. They rather hang out in dark corners. We should ban dark corners for the sake of the children.

i spent like 20 hours a week, and swam for at least 6 hours a day. So I was fit, and can still bench over 300lbs. (haha, more than twice my body weight) Anyways, play video games isn't that bad. I just didnt do homework until 5 minutes while class was starting. I barely got passing grades, but high school is such bullshit anyways, that I didn't care. I was going to be able to make it to the college I was planning on going to no matter what, so it didn't matter even more. With only 6 classes total that tought my anything in high school, one of which was a college level class that I got an A in and didnt transfer over because IU is full of shit, I could have went to high school for 1 year instead and then went straight to college.

A lot of people are that way, and I think high school made discourage people from going to college even, besides the fact that it makes your brain work less before you need it most. That and the education style change would be easier 3 years younger too. So it leads me to ask, why the HELL do we have 12 years of lower level education when onyl 8 years are needed. Yes, social development happens in that time, but 4 years of a self paced program, and more universities offering college credit for courses would make it so that students could get past all the BS general studies courses for college before even going, and figure out what direction they want to go into more.

Because new age PC bullshit has taken over education that with the stagnant one track for all just makes the the US education system utterly fail.

We need a system based on results not feelings and antiquated education patterns, create a system based on results and then polish up the last 3-5 years focusing on what the individual is good at so they can start higher learning(IMO vocab is a higher learning as its as much as a profession as the high end crap). ================================= Pirates,Shearers,Lenders and downloaders are not a market that can be taped by the mainstream. --------------------------------- I is fuzzy brained mew =^^=http://zippydsmlee.wordpress.com/

Copyright infringement is nothing more than civil disobedience to a bad set of laws. Let's renegotiate them.

Yeah, vocab has a value, but we didn't go over that hardly at all in high school. If you want to mark people off for bad grammar then explain why on their paper, fine, or if the majority of the class makes the same grammar mistake okay, but don't be teaching grammar for 12 years and at least 8 of the years reteaching the same crap.

I rather know more about Latin and how to figure out meanings for words based off of the smaller sections, or even the 'more educated' words. Reading books was fine too, I never read a damn one of them, but I understand the value to learning about different authors. I just love how right as I graduated high school some group of douche bags decided to say we are going to make one, two, and three incorrect grammar, and now it is one, two and three. Who does that shit? There is no worthwhile reason to make a change like that.

Hmm. I'm a 23 year old female, a complete and utter gaming addict since I was about 5, and I was always an overachiever at school - soared through university with a 1st-class degree, double-major. Scapegoating for the lose.

The attitudes of boys towards school was more at fault than anything else when I was still there (at least in public English schools). Socially it's just not seen as positive for a guy to be into schoolwork; peers would be more likely to reward each other for epic failures and complete disrespect for teachers. Of course, not all the lads at school were like this, but it was a general schoolboy culture thing. I imagine it's still much the same now, although from my younger sister's accounts, the girls are more in on it than ever.

Games have nothing to do with it. I blame lacklustre teaching, poor rewards schemes, lack of extracurricular engagement, lack of disclipline, poor parenting, useless mandatory subjects . . . many obvious issues which schmucks like this guy yet again try to distract from by waving around an inanimate victim for parents and figureheads to pummel. Sometimes it's books, sometimes it's games, sometimes it's movies - whatever the scapegoat, the genuine problems continue to go on unresolved and even entirely ignored.

"In the UK, 'knowing stuff' is considered to be some kind of freaky anti-social behaviour."

That's generated not by Video Games, Adams wrote that long before the whole Games debacle, it's in the nature of our society, people don't like, and don't even trust, people who are cleverer than them, so at school if a male student is intelligent, he's tormented and pestered until he dumbs himself down to the level of his aggressors, purely so that they don't feel inferior any more, and therefore don't bully him any more.

That's funny considering I play more than 13 hours per week and am the correct weight, do well in college and such. In fact in my second year of college I got around two weeks extra off than the other students for a course because I had finished the work too quickly.

Anyone remember that article about the Harry Potter books a while back? About how they had cut down on childhood injuries and resulted in less kids going to the hospital for things like sprained ankles and stuff?

You see, it seemed the Harry Potter books had resulted in an increase of reading. Because kids were spending more time inside reading, they were spending less time outside doing active things. As a result, they weren't suffering as many injuries.

Funny, isn't it. I remember reading that article, and thinking to myself, "Wait, now spending time inside and being inactive is a good thing?" The article could have just as easily been "Harry Potter makes kids fatter" by highlighting the exact same thing: kids are spending more time inside reading, instead of doing active things outside.

So with that in mind, perhaps I should start saying that video games make kids safer and reduce their chances of breaking their neck tripping while trying to catch a baseball, or cracking their head open trying to do a skateboarding trick, etc, etc.

t seemed the Harry Potter books had resulted in an increase of reading. Because kids were spending more time inside reading, they were spending Term Papers For Sale less time outside doing active things. As a result, they weren't suffering as many injuries.Buy Dissertation

Funny, isn't it. I remember reading that article, and thinking to myself, "Wait, now spending time inside and being inactive is a good thing?" The article could have just as easily been "Harry Potter makes kids fatter" by highlighting the exact same thing: kids are spending more time inside reading, instead of doing active things outside. Thesis service

that's actually a really good point, that makes me question, "Why wasn't this kind of article made for Harry Potter?"

I have seen more controversy on Harry Potter, in the mainstream news: Fox, CNN, etc., then I have for video games: excluding school shootings. And I truly wonder why that is, certainly the church was against it, and what the church is against is usually made publicly known.

Guess we'll never know, until the older generation dies out and the new one comes to power.

"Research consistently confirms that the more time boys spend playing video games, the more likely they are to do poorly in school—regardless of age. At a time when boys are already underperforming in school, video games only make the situation worse."

Because spending too much time is bad, spending any time at all is also bad.

Especially on the "research proves gamers do worse in school". Funny, in high school, I had two friends who were avid gamers, to say the very least (one was WoW, another was a Nintendo fanboy who never went anywhere without his DS and hosted SSBM parties after school in the library), and they both ended up getting full rides to good colleges...

it's based entirerly on the falacy that if the child wasn't playing these games they would be studying

this doesn't work because if the child wasn't playing video games, he would be, outside playing, watching TV, talking on the phone, surfing the internet, or some other activity. if a child is not studying because he's playing video games, taking the games away wont get him to study, instead he'll do something else that isn't studying

As you know, the education of the individual is limited to the training given to him. There is also an upper limit to the amount of effective study time, which is identified by either the lack of additional benefit, the feeling of tedium during a study session, or burnout.

Speaking of which, pre-college education wasn't that useful for me. It didn't cover the field that I was interested in to the necessary degree (i.e. materials were available, but you couldn't excel with them), and my strong subjects were strong enough to not require any study.

Oh, and a normal person is expected to have some social time outside of studying for school, whether it's part of a soccer team or hanging out with friends. I felt that video games provided me with much better social interaction than the many high-school students I had exposure to.

I think that earlier comment about "better colleges" was supposed to be sarcasm.

Though you are correct about social interaction. Some of my fondest memories from high school are of gathering in the darkened library, playing Super Smash Bros, and munching on leftover chicken fryz his mother (who was a lunch lady), brought up from the cafeteria.

The 'children are spending less time outside' argument always displeases me greatly.

Over the last 50 years (and esp the last 20) we have been decreasing the number of places children CAN go. Urban areas are not safe anymore, recreation centers are fewer in number, and suburban areas were designed to isolate people from eachother so they generally have poor community playspaces, and playing in a park will generally get you harrassed by the police for loitering.

Parents are paranoid about pedophiles everywhere so they have pulled thier kids out of organized activities and that mostly leaves children with PAID places to go (malls, movies, fun parks, etc) which parents are reluctant to do. And pretty much any 'approved' outside activity leaves them heavily monitored by adults which makes them reluctant anyway.

So community leaders have started blaming games for problem THEY created given how they have been putting the community together lately. If you want kids to go out and play, give them places where they can play with relative autonomy that doesn't cost them money.

The number of crimes against children have not risen much if at all. Neighborhoods may go through their ups and downs but it's easier to call for help these days. What HAS gone up is the number of REPORTS on pedophilia. We are never certain how many crimes go around because not all of them get reported. It is due to breakthroughs in communication that we have been able to become more vigilant which in turn fetches in more news (and we are better in finding the bad kind of news).

It's much in the way of how scientists discover the things in our universe. There are many, many more things we know that exist in our universe because of technology. The universe didn't really change from 1900 to 2000. It's only our perception of it.

Finally, as many times as I've heard "kids aren't exercising" stories, they all fail to mention this. In my neck of the woods (urban/suburban), community centers are closing, all open space is sold for condos (bad idea in this economy), and public parks were redesigned to only hold toddlers (since surely they're the only ones who go outside to play). I'd say urban areas are just as dangerous as in the past, but with the expanded media (internet, 24-7 news, etc), you hear about how awful it is more often, leading to parent paranoia.

I have to pay to use the community center for bball in the winter here, and they close the free outside courts. bullcrap. IT's only 3 bucks and a good deal for swimming, bball, and the weight room but a lazy kid probably wouldn't pay for that unless its free.

yeah, but i see your point, there are less and less places to just hang out and play sports. and the sports that are played are school sports that take up a lot of commitement. so kids who dont have the commitment would just stay home and play videogames or whatever activity they like to do.

Actually Christmas is the best time to get kids a game. He could've said don't buy kids games at all, but seemed to focus on the festive period. As with everything it is okay if you do it in moderation. Too many hours gaming would be damaging, but a few isn't. Would he happily say not to let kids play on the educational games like Brain Training?

Blaming games for poor education results is very easy and a scape goat instead of looking at the actual education system and of the family backgrounds of the failing pupils.

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Wymorence: For me it just boils down to the fact that, even at a giant company, when a game comes out annually it just gives it a vibe of being rushed out the door. And god knows Unity sucked some major lemur with all its bugs...03/31/2015 - 4:22pm

PHX Corp: I launched my spotify account today, and I kinda went a little overboard with adding music03/31/2015 - 3:59pm

Sora-Chan: Con't. Games like AC are a pain to someone like me who likes to play games in order. So when a game gets too many releases too quickly, it puts me off. Only exceptions are games that have no interconnected underlying stories like the FF games.03/31/2015 - 2:53pm

Sora-Chan: Wikipedia has rarely let me down on matters like this. But yeah... AC needs a break.. like two.. or three... or eight years.03/31/2015 - 2:51pm

Conster: There's 9 already?! I think I played 1, 2, and the ones inbetween 2 and 3.03/31/2015 - 2:23pm

Sora-Chan: Con't There are now Nine... of just the main entries into the series. There are 13 more in the "other games" department.03/31/2015 - 2:15pm

Sora-Chan: I tried to get into AC. Was having a decent time with the first one, at which point they had already released three titles. Then a fourth came out... then a fifth... the wall kept growing before I could finish the first.03/31/2015 - 2:14pm

Daniel Lewis: I think ubisoft should give AC a break before it's milked to death,and i'm a big fan of the games03/31/2015 - 1:15pm

Daniel Lewis: The only thing said i disagree with is the final quote on Men's experiences are seen to be universal but women are gendered,though doesn't anita say that games with male protagonists are male power fantasies,so in turn both are gendered03/31/2015 - 1:08pm

Daniel Lewis: i found the video to be much better than any of the TvW series and it's about time the positive women are put in the spotlight03/31/2015 - 1:06pm

Daniel Lewis: So feministfrequency released a positive female character video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXmj2yJNUmQ03/31/2015 - 1:05pm

Daniel Lewis: I think the guy who made the direct leak said it was an april fools joke when a real one was announced03/31/2015 - 12:43pm

MaskedPixelante: No way Nintendo would let information like that get out. Remember, they shut down a memoir about the localization of Earthbound by enforcing a 20 year old NDA on the author.03/31/2015 - 12:42pm

james_fudge: Conster: the larger issue is that Ind. does not protect LGBTQ+ people under state law03/31/2015 - 12:11pm

PHX Corp: @MP I think it is confirmed(not an April Fools joke) http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/31/nintendo-direct-confirmed-for-wednesday-april-1st/03/31/2015 - 12:00pm

Conster: Apparently Pence intends to amend SB101 so denying service isn't allowed - without explicitly protecting LGBT+ and while still allowing the many other things you can get away with now if it's motivated by your religious beliefs.03/31/2015 - 11:53am

MaskedPixelante: http://mynintendonews.com/2015/03/30/rumour-nintendo-direct-on-april-1st/ A supposed full leak of tomorrow's Nintendo Direct, so you can all laugh and laugh about how wrong it is.03/31/2015 - 11:35am

PHX Corp: http://kotaku.com/why-a-tekken-7-character-is-being-called-a-phoney-1694724959 Why a Tekken 7 Character Is Being Called a Phoney03/31/2015 - 10:08am